Nonfiction· 1979· True Crime

The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

The Executioner's Song: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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Events, places, movements and ideas outside fiction that this work is recorded as drawing on.

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Real world

Real-world influenceHIGH
  • Gary Gilmore (1977)

Norman Mailer's account of the true story of Gary Gilmore, who murdered two men in Utah in 1976 and insisted on his own execution, the first in the United States in ten years.

About the work

The Executioner's Song

THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous. The title of the book may be a play on "The Lord High Executioner's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. "The Executioner's Song" is also the title of a poem by Mailer, published in Fuck You magazine in September 1964 and reprinted in Cannibals and Christians (1966), and the title of one of the chapters of his 1975 non-fiction book The Fight.